"Don't see as you can. Well, make yore play when you get ready. I'll shove my chips in beside yours. I never yet killed a man except in a fight an' I've got no fancy for beginnin' now."
"Much obliged, Dave."
"How far do you 'low to go? If Pete gets ugly like he sometimes does, he'll be onreasonable."
"I'll manage him. If he does get set there'll be a pair of us. Mebbe I'm just about as stubborn as he is."
"I believe you. Well, I'll be with you at every jump of the road," Overstreet promised.
The discussion renewed itself as soon as the outlaws had hidden themselves in a pocket of the cap-rock. Again they drew apart from their prisoner and talked in excited but reduced voices.
"The Rangers have got no evidence we collected this fellow," argued Gurley. "Say he disappears off'n the earth. Mebbe he died of thirst lost on the plains. Mebbe a buffalo bull killed him. Mebbe—"
"Mebbe he went to heaven in a chariot of fire," drawled Overstreet, to help out the other's imagination.
"The point is, why should we be held responsible? Nobody knows we were within fifty miles of him, doggone it."
"That's where you're wrong. The Rangers know it. They're right on our heels, I tell you," differed Homer Dinsmore.